How greedy speculators bought politicians and drove up the price of oil.

Then again, the same people have been doing the same thing for 25 years. Yet regulation just keeps getting weaker. "You will know that somebody's serious when they put 500 FBI agents and a dozen of our best prosecutors on Wall Street," Kelleher says.

In the meantime, it could all get a lot worse if Mitt Romney is elected. Even after the JP Morgan fiasco, he reiterated his plan to repeal Dodd-Frank, which also contains measures guarding against future bank bailouts.

Writes Politico: "Romney's reaction is the equivalent of putting out a small fire in your house, then deciding that the lesson is you need to stuff your house with matches, throw out your fire extinguisher and cancel your fire insurance. And doing all this after the house nearly burned to the ground less than four years ago."

Michael Forester

"The big banks pulled the pin on their own grenades," says former regulator William Black.

Charles Steck

"Wall Street is a high crime area in which we basically have no cops on the beat," says former securities lawyer Dennis Kelleher.

These days, the oil market has again begun to dive — through no help from our leaders. A stalled Chinese economy, plus fears of serial bank crashes in Europe have caused speculators to scatter. Prevailing theory: The world may soon be too broke to buy gas.

But at some point, the economy will show signs of recovery. And Washington has ensured that the speculators will return, there to suffocate it in its infancy.

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Wikipedia is not the Encyclopedia Britannica. While there may be truth in this Wiki article, it is clearly written by a left-leaning person. How do I know that? Because of their high regard for Paul Krugman: "2008 Nobel Laureate in Economics Paul Krugman, a supporter of Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton..."

Ed Wallace (on the radio Saturday mornings) has been pushing this story for a couple of years, nobody cares. The move "Inside Job" covered the political / wallstreet collusion, nobody cares. Most are too busy bashing their favorite boogyman to see the whole system has become corrupt and doomed the public at large. With 35% or less of the registered voters even taking the time to vote, the same group of political opportunists keep getting re-elected. We're doomed.

This country is being run by treasonous thieves, liars, incompentents and profiteers. The Koch brothers are the devil incarnate and Phil Gramm was their filthy minion. Bill Clinton is just as much to blame as he happily went along with the deregulation. Dubya was so clueless he had no idea how badly the bankers were raping the country, but he approved of more deregulation anyway. As someone who voted for Obama, he can take his "vote for change" and shove it where the sun don't shine.
I see some comments talking about "Lib talking points". I assume the Libs are the Democrats. The way I see it the Democrats are just as much to blame for this thievery as the Republicans and the stunningly clueless Tea Partiers.
11 comments in 2 days on this outrageous article. The apathy of the American population never ceases to amaze.

Does privatized profiteering at all costs justify all? I don't believe it does. I have religious texts on my side that warn that we need to balance earth's budget:
We need to count more than cash.
We need to value the invaluable, the priceless natural ecosystems of God's nature that produce the critical flows that keep humans alive day to day and minute to minute. Our so-called "economy" needs to balance earth's budget of flows impossible to count (or produce) in cash, critical flows produced by God's natural ecosystems of forests, wetlands, prairies, oceans. . . .critical flows such as breathable oxygen only as O2, drinkable water as H2O, rich, organic topsoil that produces the green, food, shelter and baby's laughter.
Mechanical cash systems of humans devalue the ecosystems of nature of, by, for privatizing profiteering at all costs.

This is a great article, but doesn't go far enough. During QE1 and QEII, the government issued trillions of credits to the big banks at amazingly low interest rates like less than 0.25%. This was done in the hope that banks would lend this money to businesses to stimulate the economy, but that's not what they did. What they did was use this money to leverage bets in the commodities market, essentially grabbing every futures contract on every commodity. This was guaranteed to make prices rise, which they did. In one year many commodities rose between 70% to 100%. This then translated into higher prices, especially on food. So American taxpayers were issuing credits to banks that resulted in higher consumer prices, but nobody knows or complains... A side effect of this is that foreign countries are becoming annoyed with the advantage that the dollar provides to American financial interests. Need 100 billion to corner the market on soybeans, the Federal Reserve/Treasury issues low interest credits that are exchanged for a countries commodities that then raises the prices for its own people, no one else can do this so easily. It's so easy to make money in this rigged system that I really don't understand why anyone is paid a bonus for their "performance".

Pretty light weight article. They typed out some lib talking points (basically the mirror of Koch Bros, Tea Party) and that is about it. The kernel of truth is the speculation part. But, again the author didn't really back anything up except to toss in lib red meat words and people's names. Pretty weak effort.

There is no reason why Phil and Wendy Gramm are not in prison for collusion, as she was Enron Director when this started. except SEC funding was being cut, and anti-government fervor accelerating.
At least Phil brought his 'expertise' to UBS and helped cost them billions!!!
So, when are you all gonna stand up and yell that, "I'm not gonna take it anymore" ? Or at least vote every one of them out every time.